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Title details for Love and Other Impossible Pursuits by Ayelet Waldman - Wait list

Love and Other Impossible Pursuits

by Ayelet Waldman
Susan Denaker
Audiobook
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In this moving, wry, and candid novel, widely acclaimed novelist Ayelet Waldman takes us through one woman’s passage through love, loss, and the strange absurdities of modern life.Emilia Greenleaf believed that she had found her soulmate, the man she was meant to spend her life with. But life seems a lot less rosy when Emilia has to deal with the most neurotic and sheltered five-year-old in New York City: her new stepson William. Now Emilia finds herself trying to flag down taxis with a giant, industrial-strength car seat, looking for perfect, strawberry-flavored, lactose-free cupcakes, receiving corrections on her French pronunciation from her supercilious stepson – and attempting to find balance in a new family that’s both larger, and smaller, than she bargained for. In Love and Other Impossible Pursuits Ayelet Waldman has created a novel rich with humor and truth, perfectly characterizing one woman’s search for answers in a crazily uncertain world.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    January 24, 2006

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781415953648
      • File size: 330083 KB
      • Duration: 11:27:40

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      This is one of those trendy books that pretends to both make fun of and sympathize with the wealthy urban class. What makes matters even more complicated is that the main character is not really likable. In any case, narrator Susan Denaker has a comfortable, pleasant, rich voice that, together with some subtle characterizations, keeps the story moving even under its own weight. Denaker has quite a range of emotions, as well as the ability to glide effortlessly from male to female and from child to adult without losing focus. She reads a bit too quickly at the beginning but settles down nicely as she progresses through the book. R.I.G. (c) AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      October 3, 2005
      How a five-year-old manages to make the adults in his life hew to the love he holds for them is the sweet treat in this honest, brutal, bitterly funny slice of life. When Emelia's day-old daughter, Isabel, succumbs to SIDS, her own life stalls. She can't work; she can't sleep; Central Park, once her personal secret garden, now is a minefield of happy mother-child dyads. Since Isabel's death, husband Jack's only solace for the guilt of breaking up his sexless marriage with Carolyn for Emelia's (now-absent) passion and love is joint custody of William, now five. What Emelia cannot bear most are Wednesdays, when she must cross the park to collect William at the 92nd Street Y preschool and take another shot at stepmotherhood. Carolyn, William's furious mother and a renowned Upper East Side OB/GYN, lives to nab Emelia for mistakes in handling him. Carolyn's indicting phone calls raise the already sky-high tension in Jack and Emelia's home, but they don't compare with Carolyn's announcement that, at age 42, she is pregnant. The news pushes Emelia to confess to Jack two things she shouldn't. William is charmingly realized, and Waldman (Daughter's Keeper
      ) has upper bourgeois New York down cold. The result is a terrific adult story.

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Emilia Greenleaf falls apart after her daughter dies of SIDS, and the emotional fallout leads her to sabotage her relationships with her parents and her precocious 5-year-old stepson, William. Ellen Reilly is suitably emotional when needed and reads Emilia's narration with wit, warmth, and irony. She does an equally good job in portraying William, bringing into focus a confused, scared, and extremely smart child. Thanks to Reilly, Emilia's anger comes across subtly, as does her hidden guilt surrounding her baby's death. Even as Emilia mistreats and harshly judges those she loves, Reilly's reading allows her, and those in her orbit, to be viewed sympathetically. The abridgment is done well--the story unfolds at an appropriately steady pace. H.L.S. (c) AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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